Guarani dialects

Paraguayan Guarani, is, alongside Spanish, one of the official languages of Paraguay. Paraguay's constitution is bilingual, and its state-produced textbooks are typically half in Spanish and half in Guarani.

A variety of Guarani known as Chiripá is also spoken in Paraguay. It is closely related to Paraguayan Guarani, a language which speakers are increasingly switching to. There are 7,000 speakers of Chiripá in Paraguay.

Additionally, another variety of Guarani known as Mbyá is also spoken in Paraguay by 8,000 speakers. Lexically, it is 75% similar to Paraguayan Guarani.[23]

The smallest Guarani speaking community in Paraguay is that of the Aché, also known as Guayaki, with a population of 850.

Finally, in the Paraguayan Chaco Department, there are 304 speakers of Eastern Bolivian/Western Argentine Guarani, known locally as Ñandeva[24] or Tapiete. (However, outside Paraguay, Ñandeva refers to Chiripá.)

The largest Guarani group in the Chaco is that known locally as Guarayo who settled in Paraguay after the war with Bolivia (1932–35). They are originally from the Isoso area of Bolivia.

Paraguayan Guarani is an official language in the province of Corrientes, alongside Spanish.

A different variety of Guarani, Western Argentine Guarani, is spoken further west by about 15,000 speakers, mostly in Jujuy, but also in Salta Province. It refers essentially to the same variety of Guarani as Eastern Bolivian Guarani.[24]

Additionally, another variety of Guarani known as Mbyá is spoken in Argentina by 3,000 speakers.

Eastern Bolivian Guarani and Western Bolivian Guarani are widely spoken in the southeastern provinces of the country.

Eastern Bolivian Guarani, also known as Chawuncu or Chiriguano, is spoken in by 33,670 speakers (or 36,917) in the south-central Parapeti River area and in the city of Tarija.[24] It refers to essentially the same variety of Guarani as Western Argentine Guarani.

Other Guarani groups that exist are the Gwarayú or Guarayos around 30,000, and Sirionó some 800 in Santa Cruz. What remains of the Yuki population estimated at around 240 live in the Dpt. of Cochabamba.

In August 2009 Bolivia launched a Guarani-language university at Kuruyuki in the southeastern province of Chuquisaca which will bear the name of indigenous hero Apiaguaiki Tumpa.[25]

The expansive territory of the Guaraní encompasses a space that traverses the Brazilian, Paraguayan, Argentinian and Uruguayan borders.[26] There are various points of tension in the history of the Guaraní, but this analysis will prioritize three: (i) the arrival of the Jesuits; (ii) the exploitative labour practices of the encomiendas; and finally, (iii) the expropriation of Guaraní land by the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers.

The arrival of the Jesuits to Guaraní territory in the seventeenth century resulted in a re-organization of the social, political and economic structures of the Guaraní peoples.[27] The communities (commonly referred to as “missions”) that the Jesuits established amassed a total population that surpassed 100 000 Guaraní peoples.[27] The subjugation of the Guaraní people to one social, economic, political, and spiritual order in the missions contributed to a false construction of the Guaraní as a homogeneous people.[26] Wilde articulated it well in his assertion that:

The missions constituted an “imagined community” that over the course of 150 years incorporated very diverse populations that had to adapt to a single pattern of spatial and temporal organization.[27]

Initially, the Spaniards recognized the differences amongst the indigenous people of the Guaraní territory; yet, Spanish documentation failed to adequately recognize this diversity.[26]

The Guaraní were not only subjected to regimented living conditions by the Europeans, but they were also manipulated through exploitative labour practices. The Guaraní were victims of exploitation by both the encomenderos of the Spanish territories as well as by the slave traders of the south of Brazil.[26] Ecomenderos were the recipients of an encomienda. An encomienda was a grant from the crown that allowed specific officials the control over certain indigenous populations with the intention of extracting labour.[28] In other words, Encomenderos granted Guaraní people work in exchange for “protection,” but for the most part, this work arrangement merely facilitated an institutionalized exploitation of labour of the Guaraní people.[29]

After the signing of the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, the Guaraní fought for the rights to their territory in a war lasting from 1754 until 1756.[26] This treaty mandated the displacement of numerous Guaraní people living in areas controlled by the Spanish monarchy.[26] The treaty granted the Portuguese monarchy the rights to specific areas previously under Spanish control. The Portuguese complied with the treaty with the condition that the Guaraní people would be removed. In other words, in spite of the Guaraní being central to the stipulations of the treaty, they were completely absent from negotiation processes. The treaty was not upheld after 1761. As a result, the only purpose the treaty fulfilled was the displacement and death of numerous Guaraní people and the destruction of their communities.[26] The Jesuits were expelled from the Guaraní territory in 1767, in part, because of their supposed assistance to the Guaraní in efforts to defend their rights to their territory.[27]

In 2014, Brazil's Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) officially recognized Guaraní-Mbyá as being of cultural significance in Brazilian history.[30] This decision was the product of a pilot project that researched the number of speakers of the language in conjunction with other important indicators. There project was administered by the Political Linguistics Research and Development Institute (IPOL) who conducted research in more than 60 communities, documenting how the speakers defined, transmitted and used their language in daily life.[30] At the end of this project, the findings were published in digital and text format and presented at a conference.[30] The conference afforded the Guaraní an opportunity to express their endorsement of Guaraní-Mbyá being recognized as a cultural reference point in Brazilian history. Additionally, national recognition of the importance of this language granted the public the possibility of re-considering the important value of the Guaraní people to Brazilian history. It also provided the Guaraní an opportunity to develop stronger feelings of autonomy and agency with regard to their own cultural identities.

In 2009 The Guaraní Project began to be developed in the Documentation Project on Indigenous Culture (PRODOCULT) by the Museu do Indio with funding support from UNESCO and the Banco do Brasil foundation. The purpose of this project is to firstly document Guaraní culture through the words and actions of the Guaraní themselves, as well as aid in indigenous agency and independence through teaching them methodologies for documenting their culture, so they can ultimately tell their own cultural histories. The first phase of this project, and its base purpose, is to train young peoples from five separate Guaraní-Mbyá villages in the southern coasts of Rio de Janeiro in documenting and inventorying both material and non-material culture that they deem to be relevant to themselves in the present day, and their past cultural histories. The other phases of this project aim to introduce those residing in these villages to the process of micro-informatics, and other ways of documenting culture such as through photography.[31]

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from A. Gutman, B. Avanzati, and R. Dooley.[32][33]

Note. Chart above reprinted from A. Gutman and B. Avanzati.[32]

There are six different types of pronouns in Guarani: (i) personal; (ii) demonstrative; (iii) indefinite; (iv) numeral; (v) negative, and (vi) interrogative.[34]

Note. Chart above reprinted from R. Dooley.[33]

First person plural pronouns in Guarani are distinguished by the clusivity of the subject being addressed.[5]

Note. Data in chart reprinted from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

Note. Chart above reprinted from E. Gregores and J. Suarez.[34]

In Guarani, demonstrative pronouns reflect the proximal-distal dimension of the contexts in which the pronouns are used.[32]

Note. Chart above reprinted from E. Gregores and J. Suarez.[34]

Indefinite pronouns are pronouns that are neither people nor place specific.

Note. Chart above reprinted from E. Gregores and J. Suarez.[34]

Note. Chart above reprinted from E. Gregores and J. Suarez.[34]

Negative pronouns in Guarani can be both person and non-person specific.[34]

Note. Chart above reprinted from E. Gregores and J. Suarez.[34]

Guarani interrogative pronouns have the same person and non-person distinction as negative pronouns.[34]

Inflection or inflectional affixes, are the changes in a word to mark differentiations in tense, person, mood, voice, case, and number of speakers.[36] Inflectional affixes can be in turn divided into seven different components.[34]

Firstly, there are inflections of personal reference, which can connect to the speaker, addressee, or neither.[34]

Secondly, there is subject reference, which is the inflection that relates to the subject of a conversation, which follow the same structures as personal reference.[34]

Third, there is object reference,[34] which is the inflection used when connecting a person to an object.[37]

The reflexive inflection within Guarani holds a specific morpheme, that being ‘ye-’.[34] ‘Ye-’ stems together with the morpheme for a subject in a sentence, and is the indicator of whether the subject is the individual undergoing an action, or is the actor themselves.[34]

Reciprocal inflection holds the specific morpheme ‘yo-’, which similar to the morpheme for reflexive inflection combines with the subject of a sentence, specifically in third person or plural morphemes.[34]

The morpheme for desiderative inflection, ‘ta-’.[34] As in the other examples mentioned prior, this morpheme stems together with the subject in a sentence for indicating someone's wish, permission, command, etc.

The commanding inflection represents itself in Guarani with the morpheme ‘e-’, which occurs with verbal stems for the purpose of indicating second person singular command.[34]

Guarani is an active-stative language.[32] In other words, Guarani consists of active transitive verbs as well as both active and stative intransitive verbs.[32] To indicate the subject, active verbs use prefixes. In stative verbs, with the exception of the third person case, the subjects are not marked by prefixes, but by subject pronouns that operate independently and not as suffixes.[32] It is also worth noting that in Guarani, first person plural can be both inclusive and exclusive.

Note. Chart above reprinted from A. Gutman and B. Avanzati.[32]

Note. Chart above reprinted from B. Estigarribia and J. Pinta[35]

In Guarani, valency increases occur by modifying the predicates in either valency 1 or valency 2 to the consecutive valency (i.e. valency 2 and 3 respectively for valency 1 and valency 2) (as cited in Estigarribia & Pinta, p. 50).[35]

In Guarani, the causative voice is the only voice with the power to increase valency.[35] For example, in the case of intransitive verbs, the causative voice can be observed by the prefix mbo-/mo-.[35]

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

The prefixes of the causative voice have the flexibility of functioning as derivational morphemes.[35]

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

In the case of transitive clauses, the causative morpheme –uka is used.[35]

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

In contrast to valency-increasing mechanisms, valency-decreasing mechanisms modify predicates so as to transform valency 2 and 3 to lower valencies.[35] There are three valency-decreasing voices, they are: middle, reciprocal, and anti-passive.[35]

The prefix je-/ñe- is used in the middle voice.[35] The middle voice is utilized in contexts expressing passive and reflexive scenarios.

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

The prefix jo-/ño- indicates that a reciprocal voice is being used. In reciprocal voice, the participants of the clause are both the agent and the patient of one another.[35]

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

The anti-passive voice can be identified through the prefix poro- and the prefix –mba’e.[35] The prefix “poro-” is utilized in association with human objects and “mba’e-” is used in contexts where inanimate as well as non-human subjects are present.[35] In contrast to the passive middle voice, the anti-passive voice detransivitizes the patient in the transitive clause as opposed to detransitivizing the agent.[35]

Note. Data in chart above retrieved from Estigarribia and Pinta.[35]

In grammar, tense can be defined as a grammatical tool that is used to refer to the time frame in connection to the moment of speaking, with the purpose being to express a specific difference in time in connection to a topic or the speaker.[38] Nominal tense can be defined as an action that is true to an individual in a particular point in time, e.g. “Yesterday, a student knitted’ in which the morphological marker for past tense in English, -ed, is attached to the action made by the student individual.[39]

In Guarani, however, verbs are often left unmarked for tense. Instead, the present is left without any type of tense marker or morpheme connected to it indicating it is present. As such, verbs falling under present tense can have relative flexibility in connection to temporality. In other words, verbs in the present tense have the flexibility of also meaning remote past or near future These are known as bare verbs, and refer to events that occur at the time of or shortly before the time of speaking. These sentences can only ever properly be used to answer questions in relation to the past, or in connection to the present, but never about the future.[40]

A relative clause, or a clause used to define the preceding noun [41] are formed with the particle va’e,[40] which can in turn be combined with past and future morphemes to create different matrixes, as can be seen in examples below.[40]

To connect to tense that is past oriented, the morpheme suffix –kue is used.[39] Translated roughly into English, -kue signifies the ‘ex’ of something, as can be seen in the example below, or as something that exists only in the former.[39] Sometimes -kue can be represented by the allomorph -gue.[40]

The matrix of this term occurs when the relative clause va’e combines with -kue forming, va’ekue. Va’kue can be found in sentences that directly describe past events, or as a connecting anchor to a time before the past event being referenced by the speaker.[40]

In order to connect to future events, the morpheme suffix –rã is used. In English, – rã translates to meaning ‘future’, and it signifies the ‘future’ of something, as can be seen in the example below, or as something that only exists within the future.[39]

Similar to va’ekue, when the relative clause va’e combines with -rã, the morpheme suffix va’erã is formed. Va’erã is used to express a connection to broader future ties, and it can be found in sentences that describe directly future events.[40]

Guarani temporal markers are only productive with indefinites, possessives, demonstratives, and qualification in nominal phrases. Depending on the clarification of the phrase they are in, they may or may not be applicable, as is represented in the chart below. Through analyzing this chart, one can see that -kue is not applicable to artifacts of a food or natural origin, and that -kue is also not applicable when combined with nouns that represent permeant relations.[39]

Note. Chart above reprinted from J. Tonhauser.[39]